Tribal advocates sought to attach the IHCIA to the federal budget resolution and to other pieces of must-pass legislation. But with a final vote on the $700 billion financial bailout set for this afternoon, it looks like Indian Country will have to wait for the next Congressional session for action.

"Indian country’s health care system is so poor that cancer is being misdiagnosed as depression," National Congress of American Indians President Joe Garcia said in a recent Indian Country Today column.

Opposition from the Bush administration and from some Republican Senators kept Congress from reauthorizing the IHCIA for much of the past seven years. The Senate was finally able to pass the bill in February but it never got a vote on the House floor.